By Zucchero.
BORN 1552, EXECUTED 1618.
Full length. White and scarlet dress. Scarlet garters and rosettes. Brown
trunk hose. White hat. Ruff and sash.
HE was the younger son of Walter Raleigh, Esq. of Cornwood, near Plymouth, by his third wife, daughter of Sir Philip Champernon, and widow of Otho Gilbert.
At sixteen Walter went to Oriel College for a year, and left it with a good character for study. In 1569 he became a volunteer in a troop raised by a relative, Henry Champernon, attached to the expedition which Elizabeth was sending out to the relief of the Huguenots in France. He was engaged in this campaign five years, and in 1577 he served in the Low Countries; in the following year he embarked with his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who had obtained a patent from the Queen, to colonise North America. This expedition failed. The English were attacked, and defeated on the high seas by a superior force of Spaniards.
On Raleigh’s return to England he found that an insurrection had just broken out in Ireland; thither he proceeded, and soon gave token not only of his courage, but of his capacity for military command.
He was shortly afterwards appointed to the joint government of Munster, and to that of Cork. In 1581, there being a lull in Ireland, he returned to England. It would appear that he was bent on making his way at Court, and we all know, and most of us believe, the story of his flinging down his velvet cloak before his royal mistress, that she might step across the mire, likewise his writing with a diamond on a window-pane, which would necessarily attract Elizabeth’s attention:—
‘Fain would I climb, but fear to fall.’